Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
🤓 EthHub Educational Series
Education is at the core of what we do at EthHub across our docs, newsletter and podcast. So to that end, we launched a new initiative this week called the EthHub Educational Series. We’ll be publishing videos on our YouTube channel from time to time that teach you new concepts and walk you through apps.
The eth2 Altona multi-client testnet has been running without a hitch since it launched last week with participation from 4 eth2 clients – Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm and Teku. PryLabs’ single client Onyx testnet is also still running and going very well.
The EF announced this week that they’re sponsoring 3 prizes at ETHGlobal’s HackFS conference for developers that build eth2+libp2p related projects. Apply here.
One last note – I’ve decided to retire the ‘Community Member Spotlight’ section of the newsletter and may replace it with something else in the future!
Oh and thank you to everyone who contributed to our Gitcoin Grant in the latest matching round – your support means a lot to both of us!
Have a great week everyone!
– Anthony
News of the Week
🏦 Senate Banking Committee Remains Open to Idea of Digital Dollar
Not every U.S. lawmaker is on board with the idea of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) or digital dollar, but no one explicitly rejected it during a hearing of the powerful Senate Banking Committee.
That’s probably the biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s hearing, where the panel heard from former regulator turned CBDC evangelist Chris Giancarlo, Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla and Duke Law professor Nakita Cuttino as expert witnesses.
The lawmakers present asked questions about financial inclusion, including what potential regulations or laws might make digitization easier and more accessible to the unbanked.
“The U.S. needs a digital dollar,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “The U.S. dollar has to keep earning that place in the global payments system. It has to be better than bitcoin… it has to be better than a digital yuan.”
💰 1.9 Million U.K. Residents Hold Digital Assets
A market research note published Tuesday by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) estimates that 3.86% of the U.K. population owns cryptocurrencies.
“We estimate 3.86% of the general population currently own cryptocurrencies. This amounts to approximately 1.9 million adults with the U.K. population (over 18) taken to be approximately 50 million,” the report’s authors wrote. Other findings include the assessment that “technical knowledge appears high among most cryptocurrencies owners” and that “75% of consumers who own cryptocurrencies hold under £1,000.”
“Of those who purchase cryptoassets, 83% do so through non-UK based exchanges,” the FCA’s release also highlighted.
Project Updates
Eth 2.0 Dev Update #53 — Altona Testnet Launched
Your bi-weekly update from the PryLabs team discussing the recent Altono multiclient testnet launch, the usual development updates, upcoming work and more.
0x’s Matcha Now Live
Matcha is a simple decentralized crypto exchange that pulls together liquidity from various on-chain liquidity pools (DEXs, AMMs) to fetch the best price for users.
Tornado Fund Announced
Tornado Fund is a DAO to invest in Tornado Cash and help it develop into the first, fully decentralized privacy-preserving technology for Ethereum.
Introducing xToken
xToken is a platform for simple, efficient staking and liquidity strategies. The xToken team are creating smart contracts that wrap complicated staking and liquidity strategies into single set-and-forget ERC20 tokens.
Introducing Omen
Omen is a decentralization prediction market platform launched, maintained, and governed by the DXdao. The DXdao built Omen on an open framework developed by Gnosis for prediction markets.
The Graph Raises $5M
This week, The Graph announced that they closed a $5M funding round from crypto funds including Framework, ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, CoinIX, Tally Capital, with continued participation from Multicoin Capital and DTC Capital.
Introducing DerivaDEX
DerivaDEX is a decentralized exchange for derivative contracts built on top of Ethereum. It’s a community-owned exchange with a liquidity-mining token model that puts control directly in the hands of users.
Introducing Ronin: Axie Infinity’s Ethereum Sidechain
Ronin is an Ethereum-linked sidechain made specifically for the Axie Infinity game. Ronin will come with fast & seamless transactions, drastically reduced gas fees, a block explorer and much more.
Kyber Ecosystem Report #16
Updates on the Katalyst launch, Kyber metrics, insights into KyberSwap, new integrations and more in this months ecosystem report from Kyber.
SKALE Mainnet Now Live
After over 2 and a half years of work, the SKALE network, smart contracts and an initial set of nodes are up and running.
DeversiFi Community Update #05
A healthy update from the DeversiFi where they recap their v2 launch, showcase their KPI’s, and give insight into what their roadmap is for the next three months.
Peg Stabilization Modules: A Pre-MIP Discussion
A proposal was recently put forward to the Maker community where it aims to address the DAI stability issues by enabling stablecoins swaps within the Maker system.
xMOON Exchange Now Live
You can now visit http://xmoon.exchange to bridge ETH to DAI to xDAI to xMOONs to reddit MOONs and back.
mStable’s Second MTA Reward Pool is Now Live
You can now earn MTA tokens by contributing to both the mUSD/USDC and mUSD/WETH pools on Balancer. mStable’s June development update was also published this week.
Nexus Mutual Launches Pooled Staking
This new system of pooled staking allows a deposit of NXM to be staked on multiple contracts simultaneously to amplify potential rewards and to improve the capital efficiency of staking materially.
Bison Trails Announces Support for Eth2
Bison Trails will be offering a suite of products to interact with the Beacon Chain and enable network participants to easily add validators and scale their infrastructure automatically.
Introducing Gelato Network
Gelato Network is a protocol that makes it easy to build automated dapps by sending IFTTT-like transactions on Ethereum.
Major Financial Clearinghouse Is Exploring Ethereum for Digital Asset Management
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s new prototype leverages the Ethereum blockchain to streamline capital markets activity.
Introducing Debt Swap
Debt Swap from Instadapp allows users to easily switch their Compound stablecoin debt from USDT to DAI in a single click. Pay less interest and earn more COMP.
Announcing MetaMask Version 8
MetaMask Version 8 comes packed with features such as better privacy control, a slick new UI, more features for developers and much more.
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #24
1559 Fee market change, Altona Eth2 multiclient testnet, performance and diversity goals for Ethereum, and more in this update.
Augur v2 Launch Date Announced
Augur v2 will be launched on the Ethereum mainnet on July 28th, 2020 and current REP holders will need to manually migrate their v1 REP tokens to v2.
Interesting Tweets
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It’s been 2 years since the beacon chain was first discussed
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Some used a dYdX flash loan to drain unclaimed COMP from Balancer
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Videos
Podcasts
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ETHGlobal HackMoney Finalists Walkthrough – Into the Ether
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DeFi vs Banks with Hasu – Bankless
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Exploring Loopring with Matt Finestone – POV Crypto
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Money Lego: Techemy Capital launches investable DeFi portfolios on TokenSets – Crypto Conversations Podcast
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
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Frontend Engineer – Uphold
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Custody Support Analyst – Coinbase
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Strategic Sales Manager – ConsenSys
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Vice President Finance – Electric Capital
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+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Support EthHub:
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Donations (ethhub.eth)